


Engravings in Black and White

by EnvyBakemono



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Existential Crisis, Gen, M/M, Memory World, Psychic Violence, The Gate of Truth, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:26:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 4,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8708914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnvyBakemono/pseuds/EnvyBakemono
Summary: “The real violence is the violence that we do to ourselves, when we’re too afraid to be who we really are.” The Gate of Truth doesn't just show the truth of the world - it tears apart masks, and shines unforgiving light upon the things that they'd rather hide. Betaed by bayalexison!





	1. Death

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the FMA Fandom Challenge, although sadly I wasn't able to complete it right way! The opening art was by Hangebokhan. It won't be on FF.net because unfortunately their system is too bulky and I really don't want to upload 50+ chapters through their system, bleh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: animal death, blood
> 
> PART ONE: ALPHONSE

You never forget the day your mother explains death to you. You find a rabbit caught in a snare, and panicked to tears, you try to disentangle the wire from its neck, flinching as it digs its teeth into you and draws your own blood to mingle with its own.

Finally, you manage it, and you cradle the poor, bewildered, dying thing in your arms and you take it to your mother because Mom can fix anything, she’s so good with needle and thread and maybe she can patch up the rip in its neck that keeps welling red over you.

The first thing she does when she sees you is run for a cloth and try to clean out the bites on your arms. She makes you lay the rabbit down on the ground, and when she’s mopped away the grunge on you, she lets you take the cloth and soothe the animal.

“You have to help him,” you say. “You have to you have to you have to –“ and she shakes her head mournfully.

“He’s beyond help. Sometimes things are too bad to get fixed. Sometimes someone’s hurt so bad they die.” She holds you and lets you cry it out, and then tries to send you inside – but you stay, you stroke the rabbit’s trembling fur, and when it finally stops moving, she says, he’s not in pain anymore.


	2. White

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PART ONE: ALPHONSE

“Interesting choice of comfort.”

You open your eyes to whiteness, white on white on white, as white as it is black when you close your eyes. The memory’s gone. Well, not gone – it’s still lurking in your mind, filing itself away in the library of your thoughts – but the dream’s been disrupted.

You smile at the figure in front of you, the piece of whiteness that’s dislodged itself from the rest and is sitting in front of you with what would almost be a curious expression if it had a face.

“Why that memory?” it asks. “What’s so relaxing about a screaming, dying bunny?”

“You’re immortal,” you respond. “I don’t even know if you’re _alive._ Of course you wouldn’t understand.”


	3. Endless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: blood, mental torture

You used to divide your life in two. There was before you saw the Gate, and there was after. Life in flesh, and life in steel. Life as a boy, and life as a curiosity. Life, and… existence.

Perhaps that’s a little harsh. Some days, you’re not sure.

Now, sitting crosslegged on a floor you can’t see under a sky that doesn’t exist, you realize it’s not like that any more. Now there’s before, and there’s now – the endless wait.

You won’t give up hope. After all, Edward has always come for you before. He’s reached into the Gate countless times, and every time after the first it was for you.

(Still – how many times is too many?)

(And there’s always the possibility that it didn’t work. That the Homunculus won. That there’s no world to return to.)

Nevertheless, it’s nice to be back in your body again. There’s not much to feel here, but you’ve started running your hands up your arms, feeling the warmth that you give off as the only thing of flesh sitting here between the worlds.

The thing in front of you watches you intently. It bothers you, and you try and fail to ignore the sense of being not just watched but _examined._ After all, that’s what it does, isn’t it? It tears you apart and tries to find out who you are, and leaves you a bloody, broken mess for it.

Well, you’re whole now. That alone gives you grim satisfaction – whether you live or die, whether Edward comes for you or not, you’ve won.


	4. Midnight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: PTSD/trauma reaction

It’s midnight in Central City, one in a stream of several midnights in a row that all start to blur together, but this one is different. The clock’s struck twelve, and it’s October 3rd.

Edward won’t sleep. “I’ve had enough nightmares”, he says, and you can’t argue that. You’ve woken him from enough of them, the screams never leaving his lips as more than broken sobs. Even in his sleep, he’s stoic and idiotic, never willing to show his weakness.

A few hours later, you can see the bags under his eyes, and the stuttering way he moves. “You need to sleep”, you tell him.

“Not yet” _,_ he snaps, and he sounds like he’s about to cry, and you could have told him, dreams are nothing compared to what your brain does to you when you’re exhausted and stressed and worried.

Instead, you sit down on the floor and open up your front, and start pulling blankets from the bed. He watches you with confusion, and only when you start lining the inside of your hollow body with the blankets does he understand. “That’s weird _,_ ” he says.

“What isn’t? Come on, Brother, you need sleep.”

“Are you going to go walkabout with me inside you?”

“Not if I can help it.” You hand him a pillow, and with a still-questioning look on his face, he crawls inside you.

“…You know, there’s so many things I could say right here –“

“Go to _bed_ , Brother.”

“Okay, okay. But I want you to understand how I’m gonna tell Winry about this.” It’s a joke – you know this is between the two of you. But Ed’s always felt the need to disturb any hint of sentimentality with a dumb joke. You don’t mind. You’d miss it if he didn’t.

“Want me to close it?”

“Yeah,” he admits, and you can already hear the sleepiness in his voice. You close the front of the armour and sit back. You can’t feel him, but you can hear him, light breaths echoing inside you and slowly becoming heavier and quieter as he drifts off.


	5. Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: death, grief, Cthulu-esque horror (how do i even tag for that)

It’s probably no later than nine or ten o’clock, and it’s no particular day at all, but you are trembling just as much that night as you are years later on the countless October 3rds that come and go. After all, you’re used to your mother being there after nightmares, and you’ve woken up to the sudden memory that she’s _gone,_ she’s dead and gone forever and who’s going to hold your hand and tell you that it’s okay to trip over words or flap your hands when you’re excited or hide under the table when there’s too many people now that she’s gone –

You hide your head under the covers, and when the tears start coming, they open the floodgates and pour out like a river that’ll never stop, because mothers aren’t supposed to _die._ Mothers aren’t like everyone else – they drink starlight and never seem to sleep and have smiles that never seem to fade – and they don’t _die._

There’s a hand on your head through the blanket, and you ease into it, even though it’s not your mother’s, the touch a little too rough, the fingers too small. “Al?” You can only whimper in reply, and he wraps his arms around you, moving under the blankets and pressing himself against you, squeezing you until it hurts because he knows it calms you down. “Did you have a bad dream?”

You nod, even though that’s not why you were crying. You’re not sure you could even articulate what you’re crying about. How do you explain the sheer loneliness you feel, the emptiness that is trying to split you open and set you adrift? (Sitting in the white emptiness you can make better sense of it, but at barely five years old, it’s all you could manage.)

“What did you dream about?” Ed asks, his voice quiet and nervous. He doesn’t _really_ want to hear it, but he’s trying. He’s trying so hard, even though he’s just as lost and confused and hurt as you are.

( _mothers don’t die,_ you think, even though everybody dies, and that was what she was trying to teach you when the rabbit died in your arms)

i dreamt about a gate, you say, but that’s not right, because you can feel the memory of your lips shaping different words, and you never dreamt of a gate before the transmutation, but you say it again –

_i dreamt of a gate and I dreamt of nothing and I dreamt of everything and I drifted drifted drifted until there was nothing but the_

_endless_

_void_


	6. Intruder

It takes a long time for you to look at it again, the Gate or its keeper, except length and time don’t mean much when seconds, minutes, hours and days are all the province of the outside world.

The bright silhouette, to its credit, says nothing. It simply keeps watching, its curiosity blatant now. You wonder what it is you’re doing differently. Are you the first person it’s kept like this? You can’t be. You’re no one special, at the end of the day.

You try to bring back the memory, try to remember how Ed got you through the night and got you back to sleep, but it’s gone – it’s replaced by the intruder’s words.


	7. Wait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: pain and self-loathing

The lingering, rotting thought surfaces like a corpse some time between one heartbeat and the next. (How else are you meant to tell time?) Your brother isn’t coming. You sacrificed yourself, even when he was begging you not to. Why would he bother coming back for you now?

Besides, he has his arm back. He has what he needs.

(And you’re nothing but flesh and blood now – you were always more useful when you were empty)

You get to your feet, wincing a little as your stick-thin legs struggle to support you. Pain is good, though. Pain is something else to occupy your mind. Pain means something other than the feeling of drowning, the endless waiting, waiting waiting _waiting_ –

You start to trace the winding roots on the Gate, not quite touching the stone. You don’t know what’ll happen if you do. You’re just scared that it’ll feel like nothing, just as nothing as everything else around you. Maybe if you just focus on following the pattern, finding each speck of detail, it won’t feel like such an endless dream.


	8. Perhaps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: death

Perhaps you’ve already been here for forever.

Perhaps the world has already ended.

Perhaps this is it – the nothingness left after the Earth finally collapses under its own weight. After all, whether Father won or lost, what’s a century or a millennium or an eon to the heavy inevitability of death?

_Sometimes things are too bad to get fixed._

There’s warmth on your cheek all of a sudden, warmth and wetness and you wonder why the death of a single woman hurts you so much more, even now, than the end of everything you knew. (She was your universe, and even your beautiful, shining brother couldn’t hope to fill her shoes.)


	9. Sweetness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: food, food shortage, poverty, physical abuse/violence

Truth’s intentions are far from clear, and the next memory that it throws you into is one you don’t… well, _remember._ It feels like a memory – has that same fuzziness around the edges – but it’s all new to you.

“I’m hungry,” you moan. “Why isn’t there any dinner?”

“There will be in a little bit,” comes your mother’s voice, but it’s not sweet like you remember it – it’s cracked at the edges, tired and slightly peevish. You know you were too small to see what she was doing, but revisiting the memory gives you the perspective (both mental and physical) to realize that she’s arranging a handful of potatoes and wilted greens on a plate, trying to make it look like more. You can see the frustration on her face. How did you not see it before?

“But I’m _hungry,_ ” you say again. What’s the _point?_ Why do you think saying it twice will change reality? Like all the other memories you’ve got that sense of being two people at once, in two places, two times – but this is the first time you’ve made yourself sick to your stomach. “I want _food._ ”

Trisha stops and sighs, and you can see the resignation in her shoulders, the stress that never seems to fade. The younger you, the one you barely recognize, huffs and walks over to her. With a peevishness that makes you want to hit him, makes you want to throw him against the _wall,_ he – you – yank on her dress. “Now!”

Her hand catches you in the face before you can react, and it sends you toppling backwards. “I’m _trying!_ ” she yells, a sob crackling at the end of it. You remember this, all of a sudden – how could you forget it? – and it’s the dizzying way the room spins around you that brings it back. _What happened?_ your younger self is thinking, because your brother hits you sometimes but your mother never has and _what did I do?_

The motion of your mother’s hand makes the version of you in the gate wince and close your eyes. It’s too close to what you were thinking anyway. And even though a second later, your mother is kneeling in front of you, there’s a hole in your heart that doesn’t ever fully go away.

(Is it still there, sitting inside you, festering? Why don’t you remember?)

“I’m sorry – oh, Al, darling, are you okay? I promise there’ll be dinner soon –“ her hand is pressing against your cheek, against the redness there – “oh, I didn’t mean to hurt you, love…”

 You don’t remember where Ed was for this. You wonder if he has any memories that are similar. But this was the only time – at least, you _think_ so. She was just frustrated.

All the same, it breaks your heart all over again.


	10. Understanding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: more mental torture, blood

“Why would you do that?”

You’re out of the memory now, its colours fading away back into the bleached void of the Gate, and the question bursts almost immediately out of your mouth.

Truth sits and says nothing.

“ _Why?_ I didn’t need to remember that!” Your nails dig into your palm now but you barely feel it. “What could you _possibly_ want from me?”

Truth shrugs. “Why does it bother you so much? That memory.”

“You’re not my _therapist._ You’re a _monster._ ”

“I only want to understand.”

You can feel bile in your mouth. Understand? It doesn’t understand _anything._ And it dares to stand there and ask you that – as if truth ever, _really_ had anything to do with it.

A drop of blood falls from your palm, brilliant red. A drop of life in a dead, empty place. It brings you back to your senses – and quietly, furiously, you turn your back, and begin to trace the patterns on the Gate again.


	11. Here

The Gate is 70 paces wide. Wider than you expected.

The Gate has 100 roots branching off of the four main ones. You would count things in the design higher up, but you can’t reach past the roots.

You are still here.


	12. Hate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: parental....stuff? baggage?

You can’t stop thinking about your mother’s face right before she hit you. Did she know how long you would remember that – how long it would live, unbidden, unremembered, in your subconscious before your torturer dragged it free?

Did she know how much you would want to talk to her, hear her voice comforting you?

You hate her for leaving you. You hate her for confusing you. You don’t hate her at all. You just – don’t want to be in pain anymore.


	13. Peace

You think maybe this memory is just your own. Even if Truth is interfering again, it’s being kind to you this time.

Ed’s head is in your lap, bruised and swollen cheek pressed against your metal thigh. He’s slowly falling asleep, and you brush leather fingers over his hair, trying to remember how it feels. It looks so delicate and soft. Nothing like your brother at all.

“Mmmm,” he murmurs. “Keep doing that.”

You oblige and keep petting him, sometimes scratching his scalp. You can’t help but laugh at how contentedly he purrs, and how much he pouts and wiggles when you stop, even for a few seconds.

“I love you,” you say after a while. You don’t know what it is. It’s just that kind of night.

Ed flips his head so that he’s facing you, although it means that for a moment, the bruised cheek is away from the cold steel that was soothing it so much. He smiles, thumb rubbing over the smooth metal. “Love you too.”

You raise your head after he falls asleep. Truth is standing in front of you, a cutout into eternity in the rough shape of a man. “Stop,” you beg, but the exhaustion makes your voice flat and emotionless. “Please. Let me have this.”

“I only want to understand.”

“Understand what?” You want to scream, but you don’t. Ed’s still got his head in your lap, and even though it’s just a memory, you don’t want to wake him.

Truth stays still. It doesn’t belong here. Everything about it screams wrongness. “If he doesn’t come for you, will you still love him?”

“Of course,” you reply without thinking about it. The emptiness yawns inside of you, reaching deep into every hidden and secret memory – even the idea that Ed might have abandoned you, Ed might not be _able_ to reach you makes your heart race and your spine tingle cold – but that doesn’t mean he’s not Ed, that he’s not your brother, that he’s not the person who reached into Hell itself to drag you out and save your life. Who could blame him for not managing to pull it off twice?

For a second, you’re not the suit of armour – you’re in the body that you’ve only just returned to, and Ed’s head is still on your lap, and you whisper to him, “It’s okay. You did it, brother, you did it, you can rest now,” and perhaps he stirs, hearing _something,_ and perhaps he doesn’t. A few moments later, it all disappears –


	14. He'll Come

-and you’re back in the endless white.

“I don’t understand.” Truth seems to be stuck on that. How can _Truth_ not understand something? “You’ve given up more for him than he ever has for you. Why do you care about him still?”

A treacherous part of you almost believes it. But the rebellious spark in your heart flares – and dies down, replaced with something else. “So?”

Truth stares at you with its empty face.

“It’s all worth it in the end.”

“Even if he leaves you here?”

“If he does, it’s because he has to. I know my brother better than _anybody._ ” You’re not just arguing with Truth – you’re fighting back the demons in your head, the selfish thoughts that proliferate and spawn in the endless, endless _silence._

“What about the rest of them?”

And you feel the warmth in your chest blossom, and grow until you’re in awe at how cold you are. It’s not that you’ve forgotten. It’s that you’ve spent so long knowing that it was only you and your brother, that it’s hard to remember sometimes that the rest of them are waiting for you too –

“He’ll come,” you state stubbornly, and Truth mimics the smile on your face for a split second before you’re falling, falling deep into another memory. But that’s okay. You won’t be here forever.


	15. Plum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: blood, death

Her name is Mei Chang and for some reason, she has a crush on your brother – or _did._ From the sounds of it, she’s been bitterly disappointed, and even though you love him, you can’t _not_ laugh.

And then she asks if you look like him, and you’re frightened, you’re frightened because you don’t know if you _remember._ “I – Of course! I’m _much_ taller than my brother! And my face is much more gentle!”

She laughs, and asks questions, and for a moment you can actually _imagine_ who you are again. It’s been so long, but your memory fills in the gaps. She stares up at you with shining eyes, and you wish you could express to her how _important_ this is. She –

-is standing over you with tears running from her face and she’s not pretty at all now, not with her skin blotching and her face covered with specks of blood –

You want to scream, this isn’t where you were, but then your hands move to your blood seal and the last thing you hear is Mei screaming your name and her heart is breaking, _breaking –_


	16. Equivalence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: unrequited feelings
> 
> it's not clear until later but i care about people knowing this: al is aromantic

” _That wasn’t necessary!_ ” you scream into the void. “You bastard, you _fucking bastard –“_ you’ve never been one to swear but the words leap from your throat anyway, because damn it, _Mei,_ she didn’t deserve that –

“You asked a lot of her. What does she get in exchange?”

“I’ll give her anything she wants,” you reply, and rub at your eyes, trying to make the stinging stop. “I – Anything.”

Truth appears in front of you again. “She’s in love with you.”

“I…” But your words fail you again. _I know,_ you think, but don’t say. It’s why you asked her. And that’s what makes it so cruel – that you know that she couldn’t say no to you, that you know she didn’t do it for your brother or for the greater good – she did it _for you._

“You don’t return it. That isn’t equivalent. What can you give in the place of your affection?”

“Friendship,” you say, too quickly. You’re not sure you believe that, but at the same time, how can you be asked to return a type of attachment you don’t understand? You’re not _in love_ with Mei, you’re not _in love_ with your brother, but can’t you love them anyway? “I’m not – I’m not giving her _less._ I’m just giving her something different. Something else.”

Truth doesn’t respond. You can’t even search its empty face for a clue to if you gave the right answer. Then, finally, it says, “Interesting.” And it’s gone.

You sit down on the floor again, still trying to scrub the helpless tears from your face. You didn’t mean to, you didn’t _want_ to hurt her, you didn’t have any other _choice –_

 _-_ but that doesn’t change what you did.


	17. Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: death

You’re on a hillock of grass, and Winry is standing next to you, flowered sundress blowing in the breeze, but you’re _tired,_ you’re _so tired –_

“Stop,” you say. And Winry gives you a look that doesn’t belong on her face.

“Stop what?” Truth asks in her voice.

“I don’t know what you want to learn. Ask me and I can tell you. But please, stop this. Stop throwing me into the past because you _can._ ”

“If I can, why shouldn’t I?”

Again, that _I,_ that singular pronoun that sounds so wrong coming from a being like Truth. “Please. I can’t do this anymore.”

“Nonsense. This is part of learning the Truth. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Maybe when I was ten.” You stare at the horizon, a painted memory of your home. There are pieces missing where your mind can no longer fill them in. Houses – patches of sky – trees – all filled in with the same uniform white. “I think a comforting lie would fit the bill right now, though.”

“Okay. You won’t die alone.”

You pause, turn your head slowly to look at Winry/Truth, and she/it gives you an innocent, wide-eyed look.

“Great,” you grumble. “Ed was right. You _do_ have a sense of humour.” Sigh. “Go figure.”


	18. Exhaustion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: suicide (sort of)

You don’t age, any more than you did when you were steel, and your brain is struggling to remember the tiniest of details. Does your brother tie off his braid with a red or a black tie? Is Winry’s hair still long, or did she cut some of it off? And your father, is there grey in his beard or is he eternal like you, a still moment in time with the rest of the world rushing by –

You’re tired. You’re so tired that you can’t imagine that you haven’t been here for centuries. What’s the point? Everything you loved has faded away by now –

-you reach for the Gate door, and once your fingers brush the cold stone, it starts to creak open. You’re not afraid anymore. You’re just – tired.

And then –


	19. Colour

-and then something grabs your wrist, something warm, something soft, something alive, and when you move your eyes from the opening Gate, you find yourself staring into Edward’s eyes, bright bright bright like the sun.

“I’m not letting go,” he says, and you don’t know why he’s saying that but then you realize you’re still trying to move into the Gate. Your heart starts beating again, and he lifts you from the ground and you’re so light, and you wonder what on earth has been dragging you down when you’re filled with nothing but feathers –

Your arm finds your way around his neck, and you slump into him, still not sure this isn’t a trick, or another memory fed to you by your dead-eyed captor, but he’s so _warm –_ his arm is thin and emaciated just like you –

It takes you a while to realize he’s whispering to you. All the silence has made sound so hard to bear. “It’s okay, Al. I got you. I got you.”

 _What took you so long?_ you want to say. _Where were you?_

But instead, you smile, and it’s not until the white fades and you’re surrounded by colour and light and life that you’d forgotten existed, until the world thunders in on you like fire, that the smile fades and you curl up into yourself, and sob until you think your ribs will break.


	20. Veil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: suicide/passive suicidal ideation, dissociation, horror elements

Everything feels…veiled. The world keeps moving past you in your hospital bed, Mei’s blubbering, Riza’s concerned but methodical questions, and Edward – Edward with his two arms, Edward touching every part of you like he’s worried you’ll slip away – They move past you and you can only capture still images, engravings in black and white, and you wonder if it’ll be like this for the rest of your life.

Every time you close your eyes, the world goes white. You don’t tell anybody. You’re too afraid you’ll hear Truth’s voice responding.

Besides, even if this is real - they’ll try to fix you. They’ll try to put the world to rights, because after all, everything’s _good_ now, everything’s _fine,_ Roy has his eyes back and Ed has his arm and everything’s _fine._ They won’t believe you when you try to tell them that it’s not the white that scares you. It’s not the sense of removal that you can’t shake that scares you.

It’s the draw. It’s the promise. It’s the longing etched inside your bones for the world beyond the Gate, a longing that disgusts you and thrills you and pulls you in – makes you something more than hollow. It won’t stop. You don’t want it to stop.

Then you won’t be in pain anymore.


End file.
